


The Principia Tescordia

by kenaz



Category: Principia Discordia, Torchwood
Genre: Bad Puns, Christmas, Christmas Music, Community: thestopwatch, Crack, Hail Eris, M/M, Ugly Holiday Sweaters, discordianism, fnord!, santacon, santarchy, tesco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-09 20:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenaz/pseuds/kenaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally written for Athaari for thestopwatch's 2008 Holiday!Bang. Slightly modified from the original, because I don't know when to leave well enough alone. ;)</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Do They Know It's Christmas?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Athaari](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Athaari).



> Originally written for Athaari for thestopwatch's 2008 Holiday!Bang. Slightly modified from the original, because I don't know when to leave well enough alone. ;)

"Bollocks to Tilda Evans. Big, bloody bollocks!"

Roger Barris didn't care if the neighbors heard him swearing as he pushed the wheelie bin down to the kerb. Bollocks to the neighbors! The lid clattered as he forced it roughly over a lump in the tarmac. The last of the drive inclined toward the street, and gravity's influence hurried the bin along in a most satisfying fashion.

"Bollocks to Tilda Evans!" he shouted, giving the bin a swift kick. It up-ended all over the foot of the drive and the overstuffed bin bag ruptured like a spleen, revealing the detritus of holidays past, reminders of Tilda Evans and her nearly life-consuming obsession with All Things Christmas: wrapping paper rolls still snugly encased in cellophane, stick-on bows, tangles upon tangles of tree lights, and a menagerie of aggressively cute plush toys shaped like reindeer and snowmen and "ickle elveses wif bells on their ickle toesies-wosies."

"Bollocks to elves _and_their stupid bells," he grunted.

He gave the wheelie bin one final kick, and out popped a Valu-Pak of Christmas crackers in red and green and gold foils. Leave it to Tilda to buy crap novelties in bulk.

He stormed off for a fresh bin bag, pondering how many days of his life had been wasted being dragged around to Christmas craft "shoppes" to buy hideous ornaments. Or chauffeuring her to those god-awful Christmas Fairs where poncy actors in pseudo-Dickensian costumes gamboled about, spouting pseudo-Dickensian blather like "Blimey, gov'nah!" He had even worn a _Christmas Jumper_, for the love of Christ! A grown man! In a jumper with a giant bloody Christmas stocking on!

He had done all of that for Tilda, the cow, and how had she repaid his forbearance? By taking up with a Tescos manager! From Swansea! And she had the unmitigated gall to ask him to forward on all of her Christmas things to his flat! He jammed the wrap and the bows and the little reindeer into the bag by the fist-full and then knotted it up. For three years, he had sacrificed his game room to store all this happy-holly shite, and she runs off with Mr. Produce Department. Oh, he was _itching_ to tell the bitch what she could do with her Christmas things, but _he_ was a _gentleman_. He was simply going to toss it all here at the kerb, and if she wanted it, well, Mr. Tescos could just drive the silly bint over here to get it.

"Bollocks to Tilda Evens!" he roared to the heavens. "And bollocks to Christmas!"

"It's May, you silly git!"

That was Colin Beddoes, the useless little spiv who faffed about all day with his equally useless friends playing video games and listening to shitty music, cadging rent money off his mother. In his mind, the face of Colin Beddoes inexplicably merged with that of the Tescos manager, and his anger surged. He gathered up the last of his fury, feeling it coagulate in his chest like a great big ball of phlegm, and flipped the house next door an emphatic V.

"Bollocks to you, Colin Beddoes! And to your useless mates, too!"

And with his Parthian shot echoing in the empty air, Roger Barris turned around and walked back inside his house. He had nearly made it inside when he heard the crash.

Travis Braithwaite reached for the plate of hot dogs that had been placed with great fanfare on the table, only to have his hand summarily smacked away by one Loki von Raven.

"Those are libations for Eris," said von Raven.

Travis rolled his eyes. "Sod Eris. I'm hungry. Gonna call for a pizza."

"With sausage," called Colin Beddoes from his spot on the sofa, where he was engrossed in Guitar Hero.

"And pineapple," added von Raven (or Craig Davies as he was still called by the grey-faced drones he worked with at VideoPalace), trying to affect an expression of mysterious ennui, but only succeeding in looking sullen. Which he was. "Pineapple on pizza. That seems appropriately Discordian, don't you think?"

"It's all just a joke, you know," said Travis dismissively, turning an acquisitive eye on the pizza box that was dropped next to the hot dogs a half-hour later. "There's no Cult of Eris-- 'cept maybe you lot, and a couple of wankers with a plate of hot dogs does not much of a cult make-- and 'Malaclypse the Younger' is just some old hippie having you on while he collects royalties from that stupid book." He flailed an arm in the general direction of von Raven's dog-eared copy of _The Principia Discordia_. "This whole idea is stupid."

Colin pulled a face and took his hand off the model guitar just long enough to give Travis the Vulcan salute. "But Star Trek, that's totally real, right Travis? And your ability to speak Vulcan has really helped you pull, yeah? Goes down something grand with the ladies, eh?"

Travis testily tugged his red Star Fleet uniform shirt down over his prodigious belly and returned the salute with a gesture of his own.

"Eris is real," barked von Raven. "If I were a lesser man," he said to no-one in particular, "I would shun the non-believers."

Travis took a swig of lager and belched. "And as soon as you can afford to get a flat on your own, you can shun away. Now bugger off and gimme a fiver for the pizza, von Budgie."

"Von _Raven_, tosser." His face had gone a decidedly non-cadaverous shade of red, and Colin's snorting laughter from the sofa didn't help. Sometimes, the line between one's friends and one's enemies was perilously thin.

"Von Budgie, von Raven, von-bloody-Halen," Travis retorted, pulling a slice of sausage-and-pineapple out of the box and fixing the steaming cheese with a lusty gaze, "just pay up."

Von Raven tossed a wadded note that bounced off the computer monitor and landed limply on the floor by his feet. Travis, pizza in one hand and cordless ergonomic mouse in the other, made no move to gather it up.

For a few minutes, the bickering was superseded by the wet sounds of chewing, occasionally punctuated by Roger Barris, the middle-aged insurance adjuster two doors down, shouting "Bollocks this!" and "Bollocks that!"

Colin choked down a mouthful and opened the window. "It's May, you silly git!"

"Bollocks to you, Colin Beddoes! And to your useless mates, too!" came the reply.

Eventually, von Raven wiped his mouth on his sleeve, stood, and demanded attention. "The clock tolls midnight--"

"If by 'clock,' you mean display on the dvd player--"

"_Shut. It._ It's midnight. The summoning of Eris shall commence."

  
Travis sighed. Colin wiped pizza grease on to the leg of his denims.

Von Raven had barely finished the invocation-- which borrowed a little from Aleister Crowley, a little more from the _Principia Discordia_, and a lot from random web sites he had googled earlier in the evening-- when he was interrupted by a high-pitched whine, followed by what sounded like a car plowing through rubbish bins. They stopped. No one moved.

The Ford Fiesta touched down-- smacked down, rather, with a bone-rattling crunch-- and mowed a dramatic swath through a pile of rubbish at the end of someone's drive. The impact popped open the boot and bounced the driver back and forth between the steering column and the seat before coming to a halt in a sea of shredded tinsel and shattered ornaments and disembodied Santa heads floating against the jaunty green background of wrapping paper.

"Oh, that is just brilliant!" the Sharkhûla hissed. The fuel gauge on the instrument panel showed the reserve tank was completely empty. Well, only itself to blame. If experience had taught it anything, it was to make sure both the main tank and the reserve were filled when anticipating a hasty exit. If it had not been for that time-space rift it had been pulled into, it might have been stuck in stasis, orbiting the Falcuanii moons forever. Or until it gave up and sent out a distress signal, in which case it was all just a great big lottery of misfortune, waiting to see who would take it first: The Judoon for breaking Shadow Proclamation conventions, or any of a thousand governments, juntas, warlords and chieftains the Sharkhûla had scammed and hoodwinked across galaxies. The best it could hope for was that they would be so busy arguing over who had the bigger claim on its head that it could just slip out a back door, hypnotize some inattentive underling, and flee. Wouldn't be the first time.

In the boot of the Fiesta were five strongboxes, each containing half a million--less the few thousand it carried at all times in a little titanium blowgun strung around its neck-- Pyrythian neuromanipulators: the ultimate intersection of nanotechnolgy and psychic warfare: expose the neuromanipulators to propaganda, give them a substrate to inhabit, and turn them out to seek out sentient life. Once they had physical contact, the neuromanipulators could invisibly and effectively control minds in minutes. The future of bloodless revolution, and completely illegal in almost every galaxy. Not that the Sharkhûla had any moral qualms about revolution, bloodless or otherwise; As a species, Sharkhûla were singularly interested in what was going to put the greatest number of untraceable galactic credits in their anonymous and equally untraceable accounts. It had taken the better part of a solar year to get its hands on these, and it had managed to lure two separate buyers and collected from both of them. The plan was to program the neuromanipulators to make each buyer believe they were in possession of the merchandise and then skip town with twice the profits, and a boot full of psywar weapons to start again elsewhere. Elsewhere being very, very, _very_ far away. And the plan had worked, for the most part-- except that 'very, very, _very_ far away' had inadvertently become hundreds of light years and oh, a few _millennia_, from anywhere that it could access any of its hard-earned lucre.

_So where are we, anyway?_

It ran a sequence through the controls. 21st century Earth? _Oh, for the love of Sharkhu_. Highly unlikely that one could find a fueling station that sold sodium nitrate fuel rods round these parts. It wrenched open the driver door and unfolded out of the Fiesta-- which was, if one wanted to get specific, a personal transport unit (D-Class) with a sodium nitrate-powered tachyon particle thruster engine-- like a sardine slipping out of a tin. The bonnet was rumpled and the bumper snapped half way off the body, but the headlamps issued a flood of xenon light through the rubbish, illuminating a little plush reindeer that was caught in the grill like a minute bit of roadkill.

"Oi! What's going on there?"

The silhouette of a human male loomed in the doorway of the nearby house. He charged down the lawn and the Sharkhûla ducked behind the transport.

"What the...?" The man stopped to survey the wreckage.

"Damned drink-drivers! I know you're there!" He waved some sort of primitive communications device above his head. "I'll call the police, you!"

Well, that wouldn't do. That wouldn't do at all. The Sharkhûla knew full well that any extra-terrestrial presence in this century, even one that could sufficiently pass as human-_ish_, if not precisely human, was more than likely to end up in "protective custody," which was more than likely a euphemism for "vivisection lab." And that was _not on_.

It stepped out from behind the car looking as helpless, human, and female as it could manage. As soon as it got a clear angle, it blew a shot from the blowgun right in the man's face. He didn't even flinch.

"Oh, not the police!" the Sharkhûla crooned, amused by the high-pitched modulation of its voice. "Please don't harm me!"

The man stared, anger and incredulity screwing up his face. "Tilda? Is that you? What in God's name are you doing? Look at the lawn!"

He took a step closer, staring with a bit of uncertainty, as if he wasn't quite certain who or what he was seeing. "And whose car is that? Look at it! You're a bloody _menace_, you are!"

It-- she-- moved toward him. "Yes, it is all a bit of a mess, isn't it. Now, would you happen to have any sodium nitrate fuel rods?"

He gawped at her. "Have I got _what?_"

"You'd call them hot dogs, I think. Or Bangers? Kielbasa, maybe? Even some cocktail sausages would do."

"_Cocktail sausages?_" The anger and uncertainty had fled, leaving only the incredulity and flustered spluttering. "No! No, I absolutely don't." He flipped opened his communications device. "No more faffing about now. You're either mad or on drugs and I'm calling the police. Your stupid Tesco-hero can bail you out of this mess."

For a moment, she considered simply using her scrambler beam to disable the device, but then she thought better of it. Instead, she pulled a disintegrator pistol out of her flight jacket and just blew Roger Barris into a billion atomic particles.

The worst part about it was, Barris hadn't even been lying: there wasn't a single hot dog in the entire house.

  
So she aimed the disintegrator pistol at the door of the next house and watched it dematerialize.

  
_If only everything were that easy._

Travis Braithwaite opened his eyes and found, quite as he suspected, that Eris, the Goddess of Chaos, had not materialized when summoned by three post-adolescent tossers in their flat in St. Mellons. He opened his mouth to unleash a long-winded diatribe on _Time and the Ridiculous Wasting Thereof by Wankers Who Styled Themselves After Birds_, but the door to the flat suddenly wasn't there anymore, and something was stepping into the room. He hid behind the computer desk; whatever it was didn't seem to see him there.

"Motherless fuck," Colin bleated, "it worked."

"Hail Eris!" von Raven exalted. To him, Eris revealed herself as an unnaturally buxom blonde in a glorious chain mail bikini. Like Jordan, if she had been rendered in airbrush on the side of a caravan.

"Hail Eris!" Colin cackled, bouncing on the toes of his black plimsolls. To him, the Goddess revealed herself as Victoria Beckham in 'sexy librarian' kit: tits practically exploding out of a tidy white shirt, bedroom eyes giving him a come-hither look from behind horn-rimmed spectacles, slim haunches delectably braced in a pinstriped pencil skirt.

But to Travis Braithwaite, the nonbeliever, she looked like the emissary of death: pale, and somehow not-quite-right. Alien.

"Jesus Christ," he whimpered, and the thing turned and looked him straight in the eye.

"Not even close," it told him, and with a shot from some queer-looking pistol, Travis Braithwaite ceased to exist.

Colin shrieked like a girl and looked to von Raven for some sort of guidance, but von Raven was prostrate on the floor, muttering "Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia" over and over again.

The woman snorted. "Oh, get up, will you? I know you've got hot dogs in here. I can smell them."

Speechless, von Raven stood and pointed to the plate of hot dogs on the table. "My offering has been received!"

The woman picked up the plate and counted the hot dogs. "That's it? That's all you've got?"

For a moment, von Raven's mouth just opened and shut like some animatronic goon in a EuroDisney display. "I didn't know... The book didn't say how many..."

She picked up the copy of the _Principia Discordia_ that lay on the grotty carpet with half its pages bent under and thumbed through it quickly, an unnerving grin spreading spread across her face. Colin shuddered. She blew through the silver straw she was wearing: once at von Raven, and once at him. Instantly, he felt a little muzzy. Dream-like.

"Eris, is it? Well, then... Listen to me, you whingeing little turd of a human: Eris, your Goddess, needs fuel, and your meager offering isn't quite going to do the trick. I'll need every one of these things you can put your five-fingered little hands on. So let's get on with it, shall we?"

Colin went slackjawed. They had summoned Eris, and She needed more hot dogs. Really, that was about as far as conscious thought could take him.

Eris made a noise of irritation and raised the gun again. "Show me where you humans--er, pathetic mortals--find hot dogs!"

Colin looked at von Raven and von Raven looked back.

"Tescos!" They shouted in unison. It almost sounded like _hallelujah_.

The Goddess herded them out through the open space where the front door had previously been and over to her disabled transport. The hot dogs, she explained, would power it up long enough to go for about 100 terrestrial miles, but it wouldn't get her moving quickly enough to slipstream on the time-space rift. Colin didn't ask what a time-space rift was. It seemed better not to know.

"Erm... is that a... a Ford Fiesta?" he asked, his voice cracking and sounding entirely un-casual. Somehow, he'd thought that a goddess would travel in something more stately. More...well... _goddesslike_.

"No," von Raven whispered in a hushed and reverent tone, "it's a _Fnord_ Fiesta."

Eris rolled her eyes and impatiently forced the hot dogs one by one into the fuel tank. She failed to notice that one of the containment chambers full of Pyrythian neuromanipulators had come out of the boot and was snugly nestled in a nest of Valu-Pak Christmas crackers.

She also failed to notice that the containment chamber had cracked.

Owen drove with the windows down. It was fairly mild for a night this early in May, if a little misty. Besides, the chill helped focus his eyes on the lines on the road-- there wasn't much else to look at out here. He had been engrossed in World of Warcraft-- at least there was one universe where he was guaranteed to find companionship at all hours that didn't require a functional bladder, or functional tackle, or, hell, even a pulse-- but Captain Sod-It-All-_Literally_ Harkness had called him and asked him to come out to the arsehole of Cardiff and its environs and check out some unaccountable energy shift.

"What's this about, then? Just because I'm dead, I get all the middle-of-the-night runs?" he had complained. "You don't sleep, either, so why can't you do it?"

It was bloody well _obvious_ why Jack couldn't be arsed to do it: the Teaboy. It was enough to make a dead man weep, if he could have manufactured the tears.

"Just because _you_ want a shag, I have to go to St.-bloody-Mellons, is that it? One of your little over-the-desk romps is going to take precedence over national..."

_"Are you certain you want to finish that sentence, Owen?"_ Ianto's voice, clearly coming through the phone from over Jack's shoulder, was unbearably smug.

"Fill in the blanks, _Teaboy_."

So now, there he was in St. Mellons, looking at the remains of some sort of really belated holiday frenzy. He kicked aside some rolls of wrapping paper and picked up a hideous red jumper with a Christmas stocking from the pile, a man's size medium. "Jesus," he muttered in disgust. "Poor bugger." He pointed Tosh's PDA at the pile to take a reading, and then he rang Jack.

"Residual energy, unknown origin. There's nothing here." He hoped he was interrupting. "It looks like Santa's little helpers went on a binge and honked all over the lawn, but there's no craft, no life forms registering, and the scanner's not picking up any alien artifacts. If something was here, it's gone now."

_"Ok. Thanks for checking it out, Owen. I appreciate it."_

Owen grunted. "Tell Ianto he owes me one." He rang off before Jack could respond with something clever. _Owes me one what? A pint? A lunch? A shag?_ The best he could hope for was a fresh roll of surgical tape to bind up his permanently broken fingers. "Sod this," he muttered, and floored the accelerator through an amber light as it changed. A traffic camera flashed.

There: Ianto could fix another ticket for him. It would have to do.

He parked around the corner from his flat, and as he got out, he noticed something in the back seat. A Christmas cracker? Wind must've blown it through the window. No other explanation. He was about to hurl it down the street toward the public bin on the corner, when he was overcome with the urge to pull it.

"Oh, what the hell," he shrugged, and grasped the ends. The foil gave way with a loud crack that made him jump in spite of himself, and bog-standard cracker fare tumble out onto the sidewalk: a red fortune-telling fish, a plastic mustache, a blow-out noisemaker, a paper crown and so forth. He laughed a little derisive laugh, picked up the crown. There was no one about. He put it on, just as a lark.

The next thought he had was to wonder if that brilliant jumper was still in the rubbish pile in St. Mellons where he had left it, and why hadn't he taken it with him in the first place. It was bloody festive, it was, and he needed to have it. Now.

Owen got back in his car, and he drove.


	2. It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

The calendar on the wall of the tourist office-- a free gift from the Cardiff Chamber of Commerce featuring, predictably, photographs of Cardiff's most over-photographed tourist attractions-- was very clear: It was the 12th of May. Ianto let his mouse hover over the clock in the corner of his monitor, and a little rectangle appeared, reiterating the fact that it was, indeed, the 12th of May. As a final experiment, he extracted his phone from his jacket pocket and checked the display.

Yep, _still_ the 12th of May.

So what, then, was a shiny, gold-foiled Christmas cracker doing on his desk? They weren't particularly amusing in December; they certainly weren't of interest five months after the fact. Where did one even find Christmas crackers in May, he wondered. Perhaps Tosh had unearthed it while hunting for something in one of the supply cupboards-- there was, after all, a six-foot-tall fake Christmas tree and a ridiculous quantity of plastic mistletoe (thank you, Jack) around somewhere. But he couldn't remember having bought crackers this year, or last year, for that matter, and as the procurer of all-things-holiday, he was pretty certain he'd recognize a cracker bought with his own petty cash, and this was not a recognizable cracker.

_Pull me._

Ianto looked about warily, nearly certain that he had heard a little voice in his head; not for the first time, he opted to tune it out.

The thing about Christmas crackers was, they rather begged to be pulled, didn't they? Ianto had hated them as a child: the anticipatory dread of the _**BANG!**_ that never quite came when one expected it to; squabbling with his cousins over who had the bigger piece and therefore got to keep the bits of useless tat inside; the forced recitation of god-awful jokes; and the obligation to don the stupid tissue crown. So really, Ianto had no interest whatsoever in pulling the cracker, despite what the voice in his head may or may not have been suggesting. He scooted it toward the edge of the desk with the end of his biro, and got on with the business of his day: answering emails, deleting sensitive information from files on Cardiff PD's supposedly secure server, and entering Owen's terse notes on his excursion to St. Mellons--_Bloody waste of time and petrol. Next time dispatch I. Jones.--_ in the official record.

At half one, he went downstairs to collect lunch orders. The first thing that caught his eye was Gwen spinning in Tosh's desk chair wearing a paper crown. Tosh was standing beside her, the stumpy end of a green cracker clutched in her hand and an expression of dejection on her face. She looked up as Ianto came down the stairs.

"I always get the short bit!"

"Sorry to hear it," he offered.

It was then that he noticed Owen, wearing the most absolutely god-awful Christmas jumper in the entire of the UK. Owen! Christmas jumper! The mind boggled at the sheer _wrongness_ of it. And if that wasn't disturbing enough, he was wearing a cracker crown, albeit one that looked comparatively worse for wear, as if he had been wearing it for some time. The hairs on the back of Ianto's neck stood on end.

By the time he returned with lunch, _all_ of them were wearing paper crowns. Even _Jack_. What's more, they had ransacked the supply cupboard for the Christmas tree and the box of plastic holly. Their eyes were all a bit glassy, as if they had broken into a bowl of rum punch as well as into the synthetic flora. He had been transported into a bizarre Frank Capra-directed nightmare. Toshiko had found-- God only knew where, or why it was even in the Hub at all-- a little plastic brooch shaped like a reindeer and pinned it to her blouse. Normally, Ianto would have been quietly pleased by anything that justified a lingering look at feminine curves, but the brooch had managed to almost instantaneously suck all the joy out of a surreptitious glance. The reindeer had a obtrusive red LED light in its nose that blinked on and off. On and off. On and off. When he bent down to put a take-away carton in front of Jack, he registered his disapproval for the unseasonable shenanigans by plopping it more force than was strictly necessary. Jack ignored this, and chucked him under the chin with a ruffle of red foil.

_Pull me._

"So, Ianto," he growled low in Ianto's ear, "wanna pull?" He underscored his innuendo with a positively obscene waggle of eyebrows, which gave Ianto pause, but he quickly got hold of himself.

"I prefer to save that for bars and the occasional public restroom, but thank you for asking."

"Oh, come on!" Jack teased. "Where's your Christmas spirit?"

"Packed. In a cupboard. Where the lights, and the tree, and the plastic mistletoe _ought_ to be right now. It's May; I am _not_ required to have Christmas spirit in May."

Jack stared at him grimly. Disconcerted, he scanned the room. _Everyone_ was staring at him grimly. Again, the tiny hairs running up from his collar stood at attention.

"What?" he demanded.

"Ianto," Tosh's voice was uncharacteristically stern, "It's Christmas Eve."

Ah. Apparently, this was some sort of insider joke that he wasn't in on. _Shocking, that_.

  
"Fine." He said. "Happy Christmas. I'm going down to feed the Weevils."

His footsteps echoed on the steel steps. Cued by his approach, the Weevils started lowing, an eerie chorus muted by the perspex walls of the cells. Slop bucket in one hand and anti-Weevil spray in the other, he began with Janet. Janet, who was crouched on the floor surrounded by shredded red foil and cheap plastic novelties. When she growled, he could see the sodden remains of a paper crown sticking to her teeth. Oh for Christ's sake, this crossed the line.

"Not funny, Owen!" he called up the stairs. "You're sick and wrong!"

As he turned back toward the cells, trying to decide if it was worth the possible loss of life and limb to take a party popper away from a Weevil, a metallic glint caught his eye. There, on the floor near the staircase, was the gold Christmas cracker. Oh dear God, it had followed him.

_Pull me_.

Ianto frowned. The voice (_No.The Christmas cracker is NOT talking to me. It just isn't!_) was more compelling now. His fingers itched. He turned and looked at Janet, who seemed oddly content chewing on a plastic key fob shaped like a dog, and then back to the cracker.

_ **Pull. Me.** _

"Gwen, stop messing about," he barked into his earpiece. (_Must be Gwen. Has to be._) "It's not f--"

He wasn't able to finish his sentence before Jack cut him off, calling him back double quick. He gave the cracker wide berth as he passed it and bolted up the stairs, where the rest of the team was scrambling. He caught a flash of Owen's trainers vanishing up the stairwell to the Tourist Office entrance.

"Ianto, I need you to stay here and run communications." Out of habit, Jack checked his Webley for ammunition, but it was always loaded. "Tosh and Owen are going to check out reports of suspicious crowd activity in Roath; Gwen and I are headed to St. Mellons."

"What's in St. Mellons?"

"Tesco," Jack answered.

"End-of-the-world sale? Buy in bulk for apocalyptic savings?"

Jack gave him a warning look. "Hostage situation."

Ianto accepted the chastening with a nod, but Jack had already turned his back and was headed out the door with Gwen at his heels. "We're out of washing-up liquid, if you happen to think of it," he called after them, not anticipating a reply, and not receiving one.

  
"What is it we're looking for again?" Owen careered around a pedestrian in a zebra crossing and then over-corrected, sending Tosh smack into the passenger door.

"Could you drive a little _more_ like a maniac?" She reached down for her PDA, which had flown out of her hands at the impact. "Jack didn't say exactly, only that he thought there might be some sort of crowd activity around City and Albany Roads."

"Of course there'll be _crowd activity_," Owen groused. "It's the biggest shopping area in Roath and it's the bloody day before Christmas!" He inched the car impatiently through a red light. A kiosk on the corner was plastered with posters advertising the game on 30th May, and an Oasis concert at the Millennium Stadium on 16th June. "Every arse and his uncle will be out doing last minute shopping! And _we_ should be out getting pissed on eggnog and snogging fit birds under the mistletoe in some bar!

"Well," he amended, "I _would_ be out getting pissed on eggnog and snogging fit young women under the mistletoe in some bar if I still had a circulatory system. Dunno what _you_ get up to these days. Sudoku and a hot toddy?"

Tosh pursed her lips and adjusted her crown. "Charming, Owen. Thank you."

As they swung around on to City Road, Owen brought the car to a rolling stop. "Bloody hell."

Rounding the corner from Albany road was a growing mob. They were all dressed tatty Santa costumes or red track suits or even red dressing gowns with white plush pinned on, and many of them sported false white beards. Owen could even see one saddo with cotton wool glued to his chin. Some were wearing snowball-tipped Santa caps and some were not, but all of them, to the last man, had on a paper cracker crown. Strewn all around were the trampled remains of foil: red, gold, and green. It was like a Christmas cracker abattoir on the streets of Roath.

"Well," Owen sighed, "at least they're all in the spirit of things."

They drew closer. At the far end of the street, Owen spotted a Harwood's Haulage lorry stopping, the nosy parker behind the wheel leaning out his window to watch. Owen could hear the men chanting as they came down the street, and the mantra was getting louder with every step.

**"HO. HO. HO! HO. HO. HO!"**

One of them hoisted a ghetto blaster onto his shoulder (_who even has a ghetto blaster anymore_, Owen wondered), and Slade's _Merry Christmas Everybody_ came flooding out of the cheap all-treble-no-bass speakers.

_"Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall?  
It's the time that every Santa has a ball"_

And that was all it took. One store window shattered, and then another. The Santas roared like a band of football hooligans. Christmas mayhem roared full-tilt toward them down City Road.

"Oh God," Tosh whispered in dismay. "It's anarchy."

"No." Owen shook his head with fatalistic resignation. "It's Santarchy."

Despite the fact that she had a full view of the shoppers inside, all milling about between the chilled foods aisle and the fresh meats, and she could hear the tinny strains of Slade resonating from the PA system (_"Are you waiting for the family to arrive? Are you sure you got the room to spare inside?"_), the automatic doors to Tescos had all been closed and locked down. Completely shut. She shouldered hard against them (_ow!_), but they didn't budge.

"Gwen, stand aside." Jack had assumed his heroic stance and was pushing buttons on his wriststrap. A click, and the doors eased open.

"Might've done that before I threw myself at them."

"Yeah, but it's kind of a turn-on when you get butch." A little toothpaste advert glint sparkled on his incisors when he smirked and strode past her.

"What, no big flashy coat?"

Jack shook his head. "Left it in the SUV. The last time I had an alien encounter in a supermarket, there was quite a bit of HP Sauce involved and Ianto was less than thrilled by the dry cleaning bill. And when Ianto is less than thrilled, he won't--"

"--more than I need to know, Jack."

Inside, the cashier stations stood abandoned, the overturned trolleys near the doors and the tins left slowly spinning at the ends of the conveyor belts telling of a hasty and highly disorganized exit. Jack signaled for her to go right as he went left, and they moved swiftly and silently up the aisles. As Gwen edged closer, she could see the situation more clearly: an elderly woman in the blue checkered shirt of a Tesco cashier was being restrained by a something that looked eerily like Angelina Jolie. (_Alien_, Gwen decided. _No human has lips like that_.)

The hostage-- Gladys, her name badge read-- stood stock-still, the barrel of some sort of pistol up against her temple. Her eyes, magnified by the thick lenses of her heavily-rimmed spectacles, rolled wildly in their sockets as she surveyed the horrified throng that had gathered to watch and was now too frightened or intrigued to move. Her snow-white hair was teased up into the sort of candyfloss confection favored by pensioners and drag queens, and Gwen could see the tops of her support stockings rolled to her knees beneath her Tesco uniform skirt. Two young men, one rather goth looking and the other wearing an Little Britain t-shirt and a pair of plimsolls, were behind the butcher's case, pulling saveloys and chipolatas out of the out of the display and stuffing them into bags. On the floor next to Gladys lay a passel of other bags, all filled with jarred hot dogs and tinned cocktail sausages.

Jack's whisper came through the bluetooth. _"There are better ways to play hide-the-salami."_

Gwen bit back a giggle. "That was a bit too easy, don't you think?"

She tried to keep her attention on the situation at hand, but her mind felt intermittently fogged. _Eggnog_, she thought. _Ought to get some eggnog while I'm here. Ooh, mince pie! I wonder if Rhys will make a mince pie? Oh, of course he will, he makes one every Christmas, he-- Jesus, Gwen, get your head on! Focus! _

She shook off the miasma of distraction, the paper crown shifting on her head, itching. She had completely forgotten she was wearing it. "Who is she, Jack? _What_ is she?"

_"Sharkhûla. Sentient, humanoid, bipedal, and famous for having incredibly flexible... morals."_

"Just your type, then."

_"Even I have my limits. I'm going to see if I can get it to talk to me. You stay out of sight. I don't think it knows we're here yet."_

"It?" Gwen asked, her eyes hovering on a pair of full yet gravity-defying tits she would have killed for. "From where I'm standing It's very definitely not an 'it'."

_"That's because it's throwing out a psychic bioform shield. Camouflage. Gives it a physically appealing yet vulnerable package. Most species, ours included, are less likely to attack something they find attractive. It must have enough experience with humans to know that most of our kind view women as the weaker gender."_

"Oi!"

_"It's just playing the odds. The Sharkhûla have a thing for gambling."_

"So what does she-- _It_\-- look like to you? Angelina Jolie?" she asked, curious.

Jack chuckled. _"Nope. Thyrene Kolsaavaar. A cabaret singer I knew a long time ago. She was very... generous... to members of her fan club."_

"Of which you were a member in good standing, I'm sure."

_"Well,_ some _member was in good standing!"_

"Oooh, you're rough!" she snorted, unable to help herself. "I suppose I should just be glad it doesn't look like Ianto." She inched closer to the end of the babycare aisle, a photogenic blonde tot beaming down at here with a four-toothed grin from a package of disposable nappies. "It would be a shame for you to have to shoot him if it came down to it."

  
Rhys couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Was this some sort of radio contest? Bizarre new reality TV show? A bunch of yobbos in cheap Santa suits were running amok in Roath, in the middle of the afternoon! He stopped the lorry, not even caring that he was completely blocking the turn on to City Road, ignoring the angry honking of the motorists behind him, and gawped: Santas! Dozens and dozens of them! In May!

He reached for his mobile and rang Gwen.

"Gwen, you'll never believe this!" (_Of course she'll believe it, you silly git! She hunts aliens for a living!_) "There must be a hundred blokes out here in Santa costumes and they're all chanting Ho! Ho! Ho!"

Gwen's whisper on the line sounded exasperated. _"Well, ''tis the season' and all that. Listen, I'm a bit busy at the mo... Oh! but since I've got you, do you think you could make a mince pie tonight? There's a love. Gotta go."_ She rang off.

Rhys sat for a moment in bewilderment. Mince pie? No one makes mince pie in May! Gwen didn't even like the mince pies he made at Christmas. She always claimed she ate them under duress.

He looked back at the gang of Santas just in time to see one of them heave a brick at a shop window. The shattering glass refocused his attention, sharp as a splinter.

Oh, this was not good. This was not good at all.


	3. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day

"Ok, nobody panic, nobody move." Jack stepped out into the aisle and took quick stock of the situation. "My name is Captain Jack Harkness. I'm here to help you, but you're going to need to let--" he peered at the name badge-- "to let Gladys here go."

"You can't help!" the alien barked, Its voice sounding almost perfectly human. Almost.

"I'm from an organization called Torchwood." He took another slow and cautious step forward. "We can help you. But you're going to have to trust me, and let Gladys go. Now, why don't you start by telling me your name, your home planet, and how you got here."

This was met with a scornful snort. "Torchwood!Oh, I've heard of _you_ lot. I'll take my chances with the Judoon, thank you very much! Now back off and let my minions do their work." She pressed pistol harder against Gladys' head, and the woman let out a pinched whimper.

_Ok, that went well_. "Um, I'm sorry: _minions?_ Royalty usually don't resort to hostage-taking on this planet."

The alien's eyes flashed and the image of Thyrene Kolsaavaar wavered as the alien's concentration faltered. God, he had forgotten how much fun Kolsaavaarian singers could be. Three lungs! Incredible breath control. They hadn't done Christmas on Kolsaavaar, but they did have one hell of a Spring fertility festival...

"I am not mere royalty," the alien hissed. The shape of Thyrene Kolsaavaar snapped back into place and sharpened into perfect resolution. "I am Eris, Goddess of Discord! The Mighty Daughter of Night!"

It was Jack's turn to snort. "You're a Sharkhûla tourist running a half-assed con and stealing processed meats from a supermarket. And if there's anything I'm an expert at, it's spotting half-assed cons. Now, let's say you let Gladys go, you tell your '_minions_' to drop the salamis, and we'll end this nicely."

"Do you doubt me?" The alien's face had twisted into a malevolent sneer. Off to one side, an older man carrying a bulk pack of bathroom tissue tried to back unobtrusively away from the scene. "Then I must demonstrate my power!" A blue flash from the pistol, a shriek from Gladys, and the old man and his loo roll vanished. Vaporized.

The shoppers screamed and scattered every which way, and in the panic-- _the chaos_, Jack corrected, the thought a sardonic prickle in his mind -- a mad tide of human terror surged toward the doors. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Gwen flatten herself up against a shelf of baby formula to keep from getting pulled into the throng. Her calls for calm and orderly egress went completely unheeded.

"If you couldn't foresee _that_ happening, you're not a very omniscient Goddess," Jack chided. The Webley slid easily from its holster, its heft familiar in his hand when he leveled it at the alien's head. When this call had come in, he had already broken out the Christmas scotch (Macallan, 1926) and the Christmas handcuffs (hypersteel, shiny) and he had come up with a whole list of ideas about how he was gonna put Ianto in the Christmas spirit (scotch, handcuffs). But as it stood now Ianto was back at the hub, sober and unrestrained, and he was in Tescos with a gun-toting, hostage-holding Sharkhûla with a couple of twentysomething "minions" and a fetish for phallic meat products. Under other circumstances, this would have been an entertaining Saturday night. And under other circumstances, he he might also have just taken his shot and been done with it, but now there was collateral damage to consider. If the Sharkhûla so much as twitched its finger on the trigger, it would take Gladys out, too. That was an unacceptable risk. "Ok. Now we're gonna have to get serious, because I'm _really_ running out of patience."

The sneer on the Sharkhûla's face shrank to a nasty little smirk. "Oh, but I _am_ the Goddess of Chaos, Captain Jack Harkness of Torchwood. And I can turn your sorry little world on its ear."

"Oh really? Prove it."

The alien raised the tubular pendant she was wearing around her neck and he instinctively cocked the gun. The thing looked almost like a dog whistle, and he geared himself for sonic torment. Or death, but that was only a temporary inconvenience in the great scheme of things, one which might actually provide enough distraction for Gwen to take control of the situation. When the dog whistle came up to the alien's lips Gwen shouted a warning that he had no good way of acknowledging (_way to stay hidden, kiddo_), but all that happened was that the Sharkhûla blew at him, then turned and blew at Gwen, who was now standing in the open. No noise, no flash, no boom.

"And this proves what, now?" he asked smugly. He threw a quick, appraising glance toward Gwen-- she was fine-- then checked Gladys.

Gladys.

Beautiful, desirable, _exquisite_ Gladys. He holstered his Webley smoothly and took a step toward her. Toward that lovely face, haloed in candyfloss. _Oh, Gladys._

The Sharkhûla jerked backward, dragging Gladys with her.

"Ah-ah-ah, Captain. If you love Gladys-- and I think you _do_\-- you'll want her to be safe, and if you want her to be safe, you'll keep your distance and let me leave."

"Jack!" Gwen barked. "You _love_ her? How could you!"

Gwen sounded terribly affronted, but Jack didn't particularly care. Fuck Gwen and her self-righteous humanity. He couldn't be bothered with that rubbish-- not when Gladys was right there in front of him, looking at him with those enormous, highly-magnified, brown eyes. "Yes, Gwen. I _love_ her. I love _Gladys_. Is that a problem for you?"

He was so intent on Gladys, on her sweet, bewildered face, that he didn't even notice Gwen flying toward him until she made contact with a full-body blow. He went sailing backward into cardboard display of Walker's Crisps and came to a hard landing with Gwen astride his chest. Before Gladys, he might have wondered at his good luck and hoped Ianto was feeling open-minded. As it was, it just hacked him off.

"You great bloody bastard!" Gwen lashed out like a girl, smacking and swatting. Her Christmas crown began to sag over her eyes, but even when it slumped over her fringe and obscured her vision, she continued to flail at him. "Gladys is mine, Jack Harkness! Do you hear me, you pathetic little man-whore? You can't have her! I won't let you!"

"You think you can stop me?" The feral rush of adrenaline thrilled through him. "Bring it on!"

Fortunately, Gwen's mobile started trilling again, and she seemed to regain her senses long enough to stop pummeling Jack (who, to his credit, had not hit her back-- _yet_) and climb off.

"What?" she answered sharply. "No, Rhys, I don't know why the Santas are breaking windows. It's Christmas. They're celebrating. I don't know, maybe too much eggnog. That's what Santas do, yeah? Look, I've got to go. Gladys needs me. I love her, Rhys, and I am not about to let Jack think he can steal her out from under my nose."

Jack could hear Rhys roaring through the mobile from where he lay amongst the crisps packets. _"Who the hell is Gladys?!?"_

He turned his head, wincing-- a lump was swelling on the back of it-- and looked over at Gladys. He imagined how she'd look in his bed wearing nothing but her support stockings and the hypersteel handcuffs, and he smiled a filthy and anticipatory smile.

Gladys, still at the mercy of the alien's gun, didn't seem to know if she should look terrified or flattered.

  
Ianto was more than a little surprised when he saw **Williams, Rhys** crop up the screen of his mobile. Shouldn't have been, he considered. He'd already seen Owen in a Christmas jumper; after that, the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse riding through Cardiff on oversized unicycles shouldn't have come as a shock.

_"Ianto, mate, it's Rhys. Gwen's husband."_

Ianto looked askance at his handset. "Yes, Rhys, I'm well aware who you are."

_"Yeah, well, apparently my wife isn't! And if Gwen thinks she's getting a mince pie after telling me she's in love with another woman, she's can kiss my pasty Welsh arse, I can tell you that!"_

Ianto listened very patiently as Rhys ranted in progressively louder tones about pillaging Santas in Roath, and mince pies, and someone named Gladys for whom Gwen had just professed undying love.

"Rhys," he interrupted cautiously. "Is it--I mean, do you believe it's--Christmas?"

There was a pregnant pause before Rhys exploded.

_"No! No it's bloody well NOT Christmas! It's MAY, for fuck's sake! I'm looking right here at the calendar, and it's MAY!"_

"Unfortunately," Ianto sighed, "I think you and I might be the only people left in Cardiff who believe that."

Something brushed up against his trouser leg, beguiling as a cat. He looked down.

_ **PULL ME!!!** _

It was the gold sodding Christmas cracker.

"I've got to go, Rhys. I'll be in touch." He shoved his mobile deep into his pocket and faced off with the cracker. "I have had just about enough of you," he told it sharply. It did not look even the slightest bit abashed.

He fetched a broom and batted it into an electrical cupboard, then wedged a chair under the door handle. That was when it occurred to him that it had been nothing but radio silence since Jack and Gwen had left for Tescos. When he got back to his desk, he keyed into the communications system.

"Everything under control out there, sir?

Jack's reply came across as distracted and vaguely annoyed. _"Yeah, Ianto. Everything's fine. Listen, I'm with Gladys, and I really don't want to have to divide my attention--"_

"Ah. Gladys. Of course. Er... Who's Gladys?"

_"Dammit, Ianto, she's the woman I love, and I don't have time to do some sort of 21st century jealous boyfriend trip with you, ok? We had a good run, but Gladys... She's.... She's...Oh, Gladys-- She's the woman I want to marry, Ianto!"_

"Righto!" Ianto said brightly in his most unaffected voice. "Well, I'll just let you get back to Gladys, then. No hard feelings. Ta!"

He immediately rang back Rhys.

"Be outside Millennium Stadium in fifteen minutes. Bring a lorry."

  
The Harwoods Haulage lorry roared down the streets like an angry bear, wheels only barely maintaining their grip on the tarmac as Rhys made the sharp turn into the Tescos car park and angled it to face the automatic doors. He shifted gears and gunned the engine a couple of times for effect, a bull pawing the earth and only waiting for the right moment to charge the matador and run him flat. Reflected in the windscreen, his face was the very picture of grim determination.

Determination, which turned very quickly into childlike disappointment.

"The bloody doors are wide open!"

Ianto nodded. "Sorry. I know you were looking forward to ramming something."

Rhys turned to him with a cocked head and a furrowed brow. "You know, I really was."

Abandoning their plans for a grand, if violent, entrance, they jogged briskly into the store and surveyed the situation before hunkering down among the tinned goods. _At least if it turns into a standoff, we'll have the tinned peas to keep our spirits up_. He could see both Jack and Gwen on their knees on the floor, grasping at the thick legs of an elderly Tesco cashier, who, in turn, was being held at gunpoint by a woman that, to Ianto, looked a bit like Catherine Tate.

All in all, he thought, there were worse ways to go.

"_That's_ Gladys?" Rhys hissed despairingly. "Bad enough my wife's gone off men, but I was at least hoping it would be for a _fit_ woman! Thought maybe I could talk her into having a bit of a--" he stopped and cleared his throat. "Anyway, _that_ one's older than me mam and has got legs like a piano! It's enough to give a man a complex!"

The utterly besotted expression on Jack's face made Ianto's stomach roil. "Agreed. Now we need a plan. I've got to disarm Cath...er... the alien, and we'll need to get Jack and Gwen and Gladys out of there. I think it's safe to say they're under some sort of mental duress."

"Wait here. I'll nick a bottle or two of rum off the shelves." Rhys canted his head toward the wine and spirits department.

"And do what with them? Drink away the pain?"

Rhys rolled his eyes. "Molotov cocktails! Instant distraction!"

Ianto noticed that Rhys was staring rather pointedly at his tie and seeing, evidently, a very convenient wick. "Molotov cocktails, instant _inferno_," he corrected. "And please stop looking expectantly at my tie."

Owen ran as fast as he could, dragging Toshiko behind him. One of the few benefits of being dead was that he didn't get out of breath very easily. At all, actually. The same couldn't be said for Tosh. He jerked her into the recessed doorway of a sweets shop and pulled his gun, ready for anything. He could hear the revelers going in and out of the vandalized storefronts. _Merry Christmas Everybody_ continued to ring out from the sorry little radio like a spiteful chorus.

**"He's big, He's red, He’ll drink until he’s dead,"** the looters sang, loud and out of key. **"Santa Claus, Santa Claus!"**

"I'm all for feeling the joy of the season, but this has really got out of hand."

**"He's fat, He's round, He’s taking over town...Santa Claus, Santa Claus!"**

One of the barbarian Santas dashed past, a pillowcase loaded with pilfered goods flung over his back. Owen grabbed the furry hem of his coat as he flew by and held tight. When he swung around to see what had stopped him, the weight of his plunder threw him off balance and he went down in a pile of red plush.

"Oi! Lemme up! Santa's on the move!" the man barked, and tried to stand. Owen pushed him back down.

"Why don't you tell us what this is about first, yeah? I didn't realize Santa was into larceny."

The man only growled like a wild thing, scrambled to his feet, and gave Owen a shove. Owen reeled backward but caught himself, and drew back his fist, ready to throw a punch.

Tosh gasped. "Owen, no! Your hand!"

_Fuck._ He grimaced, and put his hand down. The Santa, too, seemed to pause... just long enough for Owen to down him with a flying tackle. The pillowcase flew out of his hands and some PVC knickers and lacy suspenders flew across the sidewalk.

_So that's what what he gets up to with the elves_, Owen sniggered. _Naughty or nice my arse!_

In the melee that followed, Santa lost his cap, and Owen his crown. After a moment, they... just stopped.

"Bloody hell," the man whimpered, his voice pitched so high Owen wondered if he had accidentally kneed the poor sod in the bollocks. "What the fuck am I doing dressed like Santa? What the hell is going on?" The horror and confusion on his face was perfectly genuine. "And Jesus, mate... that jumper!"

It was only when Owen stood to help his erstwhile combatant to his feet that he realized he was wearing the most hideous, most alarming, most _offensively cheerful_ Christmas jumper in all of Wales.

"Toshiko."

"Yes?"

"Who put this on me? Is this some sort of sick joke? Did Ianto do this, because so help me if he did--"

"You put it on, Owen," Tosh looked perplexed. The little red light on Rudolph's nose blinked on and off, on and off, against her shirt. "It's Christmas! You wanted to be festive!"

"WHEN HAVE I _EVER_ WANTED TO BE FESTIVE, TOSH?!?!" He shouted, and in a fit of temper, ripped that stupid paper crown off her head. She cried out in umbrage and smacked him hard on the arm, but then a look of puzzlement passed over her face, as if she knew she was upset but couldn't quite figure out why.

"Got your PDA?" Owen asked irritably. "Run this." He shoved the wrinkled remains of her crown into her free hand.

"I don't understand," she said desperately. "It's not picking up anything!" She made a few adjustments, and tried again. "Oh god! There _is_ something here! It's some sort of transmitter. I can't see it, but it's here! It's somewhere on the crown!"

"Uh, pardon, but I still don't understand why I'm dressed like this," the Santa said unhappily.

"No worries, mate," Owen told him, slapping him companionably on the back. He pulled out a bottle of Retcon tablets from his interior jacket pocket and split one in half. "Just go home, have a lie-down, take this, and when you wake up, I guarantee you'll feel much better." The man looked at Owen skeptically. "Look, just trust me. I'm a doctor. Now off you go. Good man."

Tosh, meanwhile, had noticed that all of the raging Santas had paper crowns somewhere on their person, either on their heads or shoved in their pockets. "How're we going to get them to take them off? I know I didn't want you to take mine-- if we try and do it by force, they'll riot."

"You're the genius, what do you suggest?" Already, he was punching up '666' on his mobile-- his speed-dial code for Ianto. "Build a giant Rift-powered fan and blow them off?" He turned his back to the marauding hordes. "Ianto? Can you hear me? It's the Christmas crackers! The crowns have got some sort of mind-control device! You've got to get Jack and Gwen to take off those crowns!" The Santas were closing in fast. "Shit. Gotta run." He jammed the phone back into his back pocket.

**"Hark! the drunken Santas sing, Glory to the new-born King! Pissed on bitter and on mild, God and Santa reconciled."**

_A-ha_. A crooked smile cracked across his face. "Tosh, I've got it."

Just a little further down the way, the single bar had thus far escaped the madness. It stood dark and quiet, a beacon of beer and sanity. Owen took aim, shot a hole through the lock, and kicked open the door.

"Owen! What are you doing?"

"Ever had a secret fantasy about being a sexy barmaid?"

She didn't dignify that with a response.

"Whatever. Just get behind the bar there and get ready to pull pints. Lots of them." She ably caught the bottle of Retcon that he tossed her. "Half a tab in each. House best." He turned back to the red throng.

"Oi! Down here, you manky-Santa-suit-wearing tossers! For each paper crown you turn in here, you'll get a free pint!"

Then he stood back, and waited for the deluge.

"It's the Christmas crackers!" Owen was shouting "They're alien! You've got to get Jack and Gwen to take off those crowns!"

_I knew it,_ Ianto thought, vindicated at last. _It was talking to me._

"Oh, brilliant!"

Ianto was drawn away from his epiphany by Rhys' gleeful holler, and the glinting of green foil between his hands.

"It's a Christmas cracker! How'd it get here, I wonder?"

He tugged it apart with a _**BANG!**_ before Ianto could even open his mouth to protest. A tumble of plastic jumping frogs and noisemakers and other useless tat rained down on the lino, but Rhys only had eyes for the paper crown.

"No, Rhys! Don't do it!"

Rhys froze, the crown suspended over his head and his mouth hanging wide in a bovine expression of confusion.

"Put it down." Ianto affected his lowest, most calming tone. One he might use on a toddler, or a dog. "Drop it."

Rhys's broad face darkened in umbrage, but he was still holding the crown, and it was coming closer and closer to his head. "Oi! I'm not a dog, you know!"

"Good." Ianto pulled his stun gun out of his coat pocket. "Then you'll respond well to verbal cues and multi-syllabic words: Put the bloody crown down NOW, Rhys."

"All right! No need to get tetchy!" Rhys let go of the crown. It swished gently, perhaps even a little forlornly, to the floor. "Did you really just point a firearm at me?!"

"It's a stun gun."

"So that makes a difference, does it?"

"Oh, do shut up, will you?" Gwen's voice echoed over the aisles. "We all know you're here and you're upsetting Gladys!"

"There goes the element of surprise, then," said Ianto, resigned. "Rhys, we've got to get those crowns off Jack and Gwen."

"Is that what's making them moony?"

"I'm not sure, but that's what's making everyone think it's Christmas."

Rhys thought for a bit. "A fan."

"A fan."

Rhys frowned at him like he was simple. "Yes, a _fan_. I'll get one from the home shop, run a bunch of extension cords, get up as close as we can, and just blow them right off their heads!"

Ianto blinked, and was silent for a long time. "I am... actually quite embarrassed that I'm about to say this out loud, but that's a brilliant idea."

And it was, too. Ianto distracted the lot of them by knocking over an entire shelf of tinned soups (and hadn't _that_ been satisfying!) while Rhys, looking as heroic as he did ridiculous, leaped out behind them, cranked a white plastic box fan up to 'high,' and sent the two paper crowns idly drifting off the heads of Jack and Gwen, and down the main aisle toward Ianto, who snatched them up before they regrouped near the olives and pickles.

"That went well, I think." Rhys told him, somehow managing to keep a straight face.

Unfortunately, it did nothing about the alien, and it did sweet fuck-all about Gladys.

It was some time later when Owen's voice-- never one for subtlety, Owen-- reverberated through the store. "Ok, people, never fear, the doctor is here!"

"And Tosh!" Toshiko added brightly. "I had to recalibrate my PDA just to get a scan on those things, they're so small." She held out a pint glass with about an inch of lager in it. Suspended in the lager were hundreds of tiny dots glowing iridescent green. "It was sort of a happy accident when we discovered that exposure to lager makes them glow green. But these are the things that were making everyone Christmas-crazed."

"That's all well and good," Rhys jumped in, "but we still have an alien with a hostage and a loaded gun, and Gwen and Jack have developed some sort of unholy fixation on a pensioner in a Tesco shirt. Will we be able to find the--"

"-- Yule-tools?" Ianto suggested, staring fixedly at the pint glass.

"--The, er, Yule-tools on Jack and Gwen?"

Owen shrugged. "We're going to have to waste a lot of perfectly good lager to find out."

"But what about the alien?" Tosh asked. "How do we neutralize her?" Edging over with swiftness and subtlety, she took a reading with the PDA. "That's no ordinary gun she's carrying. It's a disintegrator pistol. There's no telling what sort of damage it could do."

"It could disintegrate things, I imagine."

"Thank you, Ianto."

Owen threw up his hands. "We'll have to take her out. Of the three of us, I'm the best shot. We'll have to do this sniper-style."

Toshiko looked at him in horror. "But what about the hostage?"

"Gladys."

"Thank you, Rhys. What about Gladys? If you miss, or if the alien's hand spasms, she'll die."

Owen threw up his hands. "That may be the chance we have to take."

"No," said Ianto, rising to his feet amidst the chorus of dissent from Toshiko and Rhys. "there may be one more option."

He lifted the pint glass gently from Tosh's hand, and without another word, walked off in the direction of the fresh produce.


	4. Merry Christmas, Everybody!

Ianto was nothing if not a fountain of obscure and veritably useless information. A quick flip through the mental Rolodex prompted the knowledge that Eris had started the Trojan War out of spite, and she had done it all without guns, without bombs, without mind-controlling paper crowns... She had set Troy on its head with only a golden apple.

And really, if it was good enough for the Ancients, it was good enough for Torchwood, wasn't it?

He walked briskly through the produce, ziggurats of oranges and pyramids of pears rising up on either side. A gentle rain fell over the greens from the automatic mister, and he felt, if he admitted it, rather pleased with himself, with the symmetry of it all. Jack would appreciate the poetic justice on the other side of this.

When he returned to where the rest of the team was bivouacking in the shadow of a hundred chutney jars with a golden delicious in his hand, Owen gawped in disbelief.

"Feeling a mite peckish, were we?" he hissed. "Seemed like a right good time for a snack?"

A disdainful look spoke for him. He kept right on walking "Torchwood is a wonderful place," he whispered to the apple. A tiny green fleck flickered dimly, barely visible against the smooth, yellow skin. "You've never wanted to be anyplace else. All your life, you've dreamed of sleeping in the cells of Torchwood, and you'll surrender to us quickly and quietly."

"Ianto, what are you doing?"

Tosh's voice held a note of concern, but he paid it no mind. "Jack? Can you hear me?"

Jack sighed a lovelorn sigh. _"Yeah, I hear you. I... I need to save Gladys, Ianto. How can I keep her safe?"_

He wasn't accustomed to hearing Jack sound so helpless, so utterly confounded. It sparked a blinding sort of outrage in him, a fury that someone or some_thing_ would take pleasure in turning this brilliant, visceral man into a hapless laughing stock, the butt of a ridiculous joke. It was demeaning, and seeing Jack demeaned was worse, in a way, than seeing him injured. It was intolerable.

_This ends now._

"Listen to me, Jack. Do you love her?" Of all the times he had imagined having to ask Jack that question, he hadn't envisioned it happening in a supermarket, and he hadn't expected to be referring to an elderly cashier. But none of that mattered much at present: he needed Jack's investment in this, and the only way to guarantee that at the moment was to play along. "Do you love... Gladys... enough to die for her?"

Jack chuckled darkly, giving Ianto hope that Jack-- _his_ Jack-- was still in there, somewhere. _"At Christmas? Easter would've been a bit more appropriate for that, don't you think?" _

Ianto said nothing. Despite Jack's attempt at levity, what he was asking Jack to do made him absolutely sick.

"Jack, the disintegrator pistol... can you, you know, come back from that?"

It took Jack a moment to answer._"I don't know. But if it'll help someone I love, 12th of May is as good a day as any other to find out."_

Ianto swallowed hard. "On the count of three, then." His voice wavered, but only slightly. Maybe Jack hadn't even heard.

_"I'm ready, Ianto." _

The encouragement he heard in Jack's voice very nearly broke him.

"One...Two..."

He didn't even have to say "three." Jack was already lunging toward Eris, and suddenly the entire world was spinning in slow motion, every second a protracted and horrible farce. Eris forced Gladys to the ground, and the woman seemed to take forever to fall, Gwen reaching for her, wide-eyed and desperate, as she made a blue-checkered arc across the foreground of Ianto's vision. At the same time, Eris was bringing the pistol around to bear on Jack, and Ianto heard his own voice rising in the fray, a strange echo that seemed to come from anywhere and everywhere but his own mouth:

"Kallisti!" he cried. _For the most beautiful._

Then Ianto Jones hurled a golden apple in the face of a goddess.

As the apple exploded in a squall of juice and pulp, a blue flash emanated from the muzzle of Eris' gun. Gladys, sprawled on the floor and shielded by Gwen's body, fainted dead away. Jack didn't even make a sound; he wasn't there. He had simply...gone. And Ianto felt the ground beneath his feet fall away as the howl of horror rising in his lungs died there, and left him on his knees with only an undignified whimper to show for his anguish.

The gun fell from Eris' hand, forgotten, and Owen darted forward to kick it away before taking her down with a forceful kick to the back of the knees. He held her to the floor with a foot between her shoulder blades, and while she didn't even try to resist, Owen kept his gun aimed at the back of her head all the same.

"Just give me a reason," he threatened, his voice menacing and low.

Tosh helped Gladys to her feet, much to Gwen's persistent and vocal dismay. "She's mine, Tosh!" she called after them, and then shrieked as she was showered in lager by Rhys, who seemed to be taking extraordinary pleasure in shaking up the bottles and letting them spray out wildly all over her. Within moments, a tiny green speck appeared on her cheek. Rhys flicked it off with his fingers and ground it into the floor under his heel.

Gwen looked at him, shivering and furious. "What in God's name did you do that for?" she demanded.

"Just tell me who you love, gorgeous."

She frowned hard. "I love _you_, you silly ape, but at the moment, I'd really like to wring your neck."

"That's fine," Rhys laughed, pulling her into his arms. "That's just fine."

  
Ianto couldn't move, couldn't do anything but stand there, his stomach in free-fall. Owen was roughly cuffing the alien, who was babbling mindlessly: "Torchwood is a wonderful place! I've always wanted to stay in Torchwood! I hear the cells there are delightful." Tosh was taking care of Gladys, Gwen and Rhys were having a bit of a soggy reunion, but Ianto couldn't even speak. When he heard Gwen cry out, he knew Rhys had told her what had happened, what he had done.

Jack was gone. And it had been his brilliant plan that had been responsible.

_Kallisti. For the most beautiful._ What he had sacrificed had been the most beautiful thing of all.

"Oh God," he whispered to the empty air. The sob welling up in his throat was stopped from rising to his lips only by the tightness of his tie. "Jack... I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

Two hands came around him and gripped him firmly at the waist. He startled, even though his body knew that touch as well as it knew his own.

"Sorry for what?"

Boneless with relief, a veritable puddle of Torchwood General Support spread out on the lino in front of the cold cuts. There, behind him in the middle of the fresh meat and poultry aisle, stood Jack. Naked as the plucked chickens on the butcher's racks. Rhys put his hands over Gwen's eyes.

"Jack?" Tosh reeled around. Almost instantly, her face went crimson and her gaze fell to her feet. "You're, ah, back, I see." she giggled, "_all_ of you."

"But you were... disintegrated." His voice had come out in a graceless squeak.

"Apparently, I re-integrated. Over in the pet care section. My clothes, however, didn't. Good thing I left the greatcoat in the car, huh?"

"Really, Harkness?" Owen feigned irritation, but his grin was awkward and wide. "Starkers in Tescos? That's got to be a new one even for you."

Jack put his hands on his hips and cocked his head thoughtfully. "Well, there was this one time in Asda..."

"Don't want to know." Owen held up his hands defensively. "_Really_ don't want to know."

Ianto was still at a loss for words. After a moment of awkward flailing, he simply threw his arms around Jack's neck and held him tight, which earned him a laugh and a rough pinch on the backside, followed by the welcome sensation of warm, moist breath in his ear.

"Have I mentioned that I find public nudity and supermarkets very exciting?"

Oh? _Oh._Ianto could only assume that wasn't a banana in Jack's non-existent pocket, and that Jack was really happy to see him. He could see the produce section over Jack's shoulder and wondered if this would be a good time to determine if 'he turned beet red' was a literal or figurative expression. "Well, er... I'll just go and find you a dressing gown or something, shall I?"

"Ooooh, now that's a bit of nice, isn't it, dear?" Ianto heard Gladys say to Toshiko as Jack turned around and gave the cashier a shameless wink. "If I'd known _that_ was on offer, I would have said yes to his proposal straight away!"

  
Once Jack was suitably dressed-- well, not really _suitably_, but at least _dressed_\-- They began the clean-up. Their cover story seemed obvious enough: tainted hot dogs cause mass hallucinations in Cardiff.

"What's your name, love?"

Gwen, still dripping lager, began debriefing Eris' traumatized former minions once they, too, had been hosed down with beer and the Yule-tools removed. The goth boy's hands were still trembling.

"Von Ra..." he faltered, swallowed, shook his head, and began again. "It's just Craig. Craig Davies. I work at VideoPalace."

Gwen patted his arm reassuringly. "I need to ask you and your friend a few questions, Craig. And then I've got some... some prescription-strength Codeine for you to take. By the time you wake up tomorrow, all of this will just seem like a bad dream."

The damnable Slade song continued to wail out over the PA, extolling the joys of Christmas. "Sod this," Owen snapped, storming over to the manager's office and, on his third try, kicking in the door. Three shots rang out, and the PA went silent.

"Overkill, perhaps," he said, stepping out of the office and blowing across the muzzle of his gun like a cowboy. "But extremely satisfying." He holstered it with a flourish and a smirk.

"I'm sure it was," Ianto agreed, and offered over the piece of fruit he had been buffing against his jacket sleeve. "Apple?"

"Sod off," Owen glared, shrugging away irritably when Ianto gave him a conciliatory pat on the back. No longer having much in the way of tactile sensation, he didn't particularly notice a sodden clump of an erstwhile cracker crown clinging to the back of his shirt.

  
They crossed the car park wearily, but with a pleasant sort of bonhomie sparkling in the air between them. It seemed, Ianto thought, as if they'd all got a dose of Christmas spirit after all.

Jack, resplendent in a blackwatch plaid dressing gown and red fuzzy slippers, was almost beside himself with glee when they approached a super-mini that had been carelessly parked across three bays in the blue badge section.

"Oh, man! I haven't seen one of these in ages! And this explains all the hot dogs. It's a D-Class personal transport with a sodium nitrate-powered tachyon particle thruster engine! A little space ship that runs on sausage!"

Rhys frowned. "Looks like a Ford Fiesta to me."

"Actually," Ianto corrected, "I believe you'd call it a _Fnord_ Fiesta."

No one got the joke, but it hardly mattered.

"You know what I think," Owen said, a slightly glazed look in his eye, "I think that we, as an institution, don't give Ianto the respect he deserves. I mean, really: Who's better than Ianto?"

Everyone turned and looked at him.

"_What?_ I'm serious! Ianto's brilliant. The unsung masterming behind our operation. Have you considered giving him a raise lately, Jack? Or a vacation? Or a _promotion_? I could be Ianto's assistant! What do you think, Jack?"

Jack was giving Ianto a hard look, though it was hard to take the man seriously when he was standing in the middle of a Tescos car park in red slippers. "Are we going to have to review the section in the Employee Handbook about abuse of alien tech?"

"At length, sir," Ianto replied, looking utterly sincere. "I may require significant re-education," he added. "Perhaps a teaching tool might help."

He handed Jack a can of aerosol whipped-cream without further comment and walked toward the SUV.

They made their way back to the Hub, a happy convoy, Gwen riding in the Harwood's Lorry (Rhys had agreed to tow the Fiesta for a comfortable "consulting fee") and everyone else, including the alien, in the SUV. Ianto made no comment on the fact that an RAF greatcoat looked utterly ridiculous over a plaid dressing gown, nor did he mention that bedroom slippers were hardly appropriate for driving. Jack's face wore the contented expression of a job well done; who was he to disturb it with sartorial sarcasm? For once, Owen sat in the back seat without whining. Such a shame that it was only temporary. Maybe he'd take some video first, just as a memento. Or as future blackmail ammunition. At least he could look forward to hosing him down with beer later: life's simple pleasures.

  
As they stepped onto the lip of the paving stone, Jack made a grab for Ianto's hand and caught it.

"Hey. Ianto."

Ianto's lips turned up in a small, private smile. "Jack."

"I know it's May--" his free hand rifled through the interior pocket of his greatcoat and pulled out a somewhat misshapen sprig of plastic mistletoe "-- but it is too late to get a kiss under the mistletoe?"

Ianto didn't say a word. He just stepped closer, never letting go of Jack's hand, and kissed him softly on the mouth. "Happy Christmas, Jack."

The invisible lift began its measured descent into the Hub. No one on the Plass, least of all Ianto, noticed the gold-foiled Christmas cracker, incongruous yet nearly invisible beneath a surprisingly sunny Spring sky, rolling slowly but inexorably toward the them.

  
The End ... ?

**Author's Note:**

> It goes without saying that the Principia Discordia, Terry Pratchett, Monty Python, and Santacon all played a hand in inspiring this travesty, and for that, I am truly grateful. Songs sung by the Santa mob were blithely stolen from the official UK Santacon site, www.santacon.co.uk. Fnord!


End file.
